Episode 53 - The Casket Girls

Send us Fan Mail France sold its most vulnerable women a lie, and shipped them across an ocean in chains when they stopped believing it. In this episode, we trace the full arc of France's colonial women programs, from the carefully vetted Filles du Roi of 1663 to the prisoners and orphans dragged from the streets of Paris and forced onto ships bound for Louisiana. We cover who these women actually were, what happened to them when they arrived, and how history misremembered them as criminals and prostitutes for three centuries. Then we get into the part that keeps people up at night: the pale women who couldn't tolerate sunlight, the empty trunks, the sealed third floor of the Old Ursuline Convent, and the reports that have never fully stopped coming. History, witness testimony, and the space in between. Support the show